Electric Palm Tree

Circuit for Art and Alterity

Electric Palm Tree is a circuit of critical art practices and research dedicated to issues of alterity and planetary co-existence.

In contemporary global culture, the discourses of cosmopolitanism and multiculturalism run parallel to each other without engaging in a substantial dialogue. Whereas cosmopolitanism disregards matters of context, treating all culture as part of a global continuum and focusing on those cultural practices that are easily integrated into this global hegemony, multiculturalism sees it as its task to compensate for this cosmopolitanism — which is in many ways modeled on western standards — by representing “others” in a well-meaning but patronizing and latently colonial manner. Whilst cosmopolitanism is associated with a plea for new universalism on the basis of common values such as democracy, multiculturalism leads to identity politics and its fetishist focus on differences, neglecting a political process of dialogue and negotiation between them.

Critical of these tendencies, Electric Palm Tree defends neither the universal nor the non-identical but intervenes in this frozen dialectic, setting discourse in motion again through critical exploration and artistic “re-invention”. The asymmetrical, uneven and conflicting relations between different “cultures” are to be examined as to their structures and conditions, embedded as they are in global capitalism, and to be re-articulated and recomposed through critical artistic practices. Thus, Electric Palm Tree pursues an inquiry into the state of alterity and different forms of the communal.

The unfamiliar and awkward name Electric Palm Tree refers to an actual object – an artificial palm tree made of florescent coloured plastic and lit with LED lights. These electric palm trees can be found in many tropical and non-tropical metropolises across the globe, serving the attention economy. Whereas the meaning of palm tree as a symbol of victory and peace has been extended to signify the tropical, the exotic and idyllic, and finally the (post) colonial and tourism, these uprooted artificial palm trees unveil or “enlighten” such myths of the “natural” palm tree. Standing and blinking in the (sub)urban darkness, often in front of restaurants, cafes, clubs, shops, or gas stations, they present a vernacular and distorted state of exotic otherness or ideal existence. Electric palm trees, therefore, are ambivalent signifiers of co-existence and global exchange; in all their debased glory, they point beyond the pipe-dreams of cosmopolitanism and multiculturalism.

Taking this object and its implication as our shared condition and thus the point of departure for any undertaking, Electric Palm Tree forms a circuit of critical art practices that enables their execution, production, gathering, circulation and also deviation. Seeking to function like an electric circuit, Electric Palm Tree aims to create an alternative current of exchange between artistic practices and researches, as well as other cultural and intellectual fields. Electric Palm Tree intermittently defines specific focuses, and different artistic projects are instigated accordingly. Whilst each focus and project involves different individual and collective forms of activities through various channels of communication in the public sphere, the related ongoing research and referential materials are gathered and shared to establish an online library.

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